In 2023, a group of district and school leaders and other education constituents convened by the Delaware Department of Education raised questions about the growth metric in the state’s accountability system. They wondered whether the state’s growth model was too highly related to achievement and, therefore, not rewarding schools for helping students grow even when overall achievement was low.
Based on this input, state leaders convened a new technical group—a growth model study group—to examine the characteristics of the growth indicator in the state’s school accountability system and investigate whether it was working as intended or should be replaced with another growth model.
This paper reports on the study group’s work, outlining its processes, findings, and feedback.
